Cambodia - Part 1 - What do you mean it's 4US$

Phnom Penh - Siem Reap
July 1 - July 15 2009

As soon as I was on the mend (apart from the aforementioned hideous purple rash) we headed across the border to Cambodia, the plan was to make it to Siem Reap by Monday 6 July to meet up with Jo and Nick, good mates of ours who have biked from Singapore yep that's right biked, more about that later! We caught the bus on 1 July from Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) and after two huge queues at the check point (and an extra $4US dollars each for the bus guys to fill in our visa applications!) and a few hours, we arrived in Phnom Penh. At about 2 million Phnom Penh is much smaller than HCMC and therefore a little less insane. Phnom Penh is a pretty well established city and you can get anything you want in this city. What we wanted was the Lleyton Hewitt vs. Andy Roddick Wimbledon quarter-final on a big screen. Which of course we found in a bar with a friendly owner from Adelaide!

We spent a few days simply wandering around the markets of Phnom Penh saving the museums, pagodas etc for when we return with Jo and Nick. One of the most bizarre aspects of Cambodia is the dual currency the Cambodian Riel and the US dollar. You go to an ATM (usually an ANZ) and you get US$ you catch a tuk-tuk or stay in a hotel it's quoted in US dollars. Basically it seems to work like this, there is fairly consistently 4,000 Cambodian Riel to the US dollar (although obviously the official rate varies) most things are quoted in US$ if you need change that is less than a dollar you receive it in Riel so it is not unusual to get a mixture of Riel and US$ in your change - what the? Anyway we are used to it now and have learned to barter effectively using this strange mixture of currency.

Phnom Penh is actually quite an attractive city with some stunning art deco and french colonial architecture and wide treed boulevards. The cities location next to a tributary of the Mekong certainly helps this as well. Unfortunately a lack of drainage infrastructure and rubbish collection can effect this ambiance, particularly in heavy rain. More on Phnom Penh later. On the 5 July we headed to Siem Reap where the plan was to meet up with Nick and Jo by Monday - they were riding their bicycles a couple of hundred k's from Thailand and were not sure how long it would take them. (The link to their blog, which they update way more often then us, is on the right under crazyguyonabike.com). It turns out that they arrived two days earlier and by 8pm Sat evening we were sharing some well deserved Angkor beers. Jo and I have known each other since high school and have had many an adventure in Oz, Asia, Africa and Europe and it has been great to catch up - we will travel together for a while now through Cambodia and onto the Mekong Delta into Vietnam. We have been so adventurous since we all met up that we spend several hours each day undertaking the guys vs gals Cambodian Canasta Championship (CCC)! Every now and then we drag ourselves away from the CCC to venture out to ride bicycles around Angkor one of UNESCO's most significant World Heritage sites (Angkor will be the subject of a future blog). Other people at our hotel actually participated in activities around Siem Reap like volunteer work at schools and orphanages and the like whilst we played cards and drank beer. This didn't last forever of course and we eventually began to again socialise with the outside world.

After a week or so in Siem Reap we caught a boat to Battambang according to the guide book it was to be the most picturesque boat ride in Cambodia. $18 US each for a boat ride seemed a bit steep but given it ended up being 9 hours maybe not! We were collected from our guesthouse at 6 in the morning the four of us and Jo and Nick's two bicycles, the Khmer guys walked us over to a ute that already had 6 people and their luggage sitting on the back, they piled in all of our luggage myself and Ben and then proceeded to put Jo and Nick's mountain bikes on top of all of us! Nick was directed to sit on the roof. Jo got a squashy seat in a minivan behind us! We considered this to be a bad sign for the boat trip ahead.

Ultimately it wasn't too bad (hint: take a cushion) card playing was not to be but the scenery was pretty interesting and we only broke down once, when the boat ran into a fishing net which was stuck in the propeller. The journey passed through Tonle Sap lake (one of the most productive inland fisheries in the world) past the floating villages which are villages built on boats that move up and down depending on the height of the river and then up a very narrow tributary which the boat didn't quite fit so we would crash into the reeds.

Spending time with Jo and Nick has made Ben and I very jealous of their much more independent method of transport (and made us realise how unfit we are!)